Thursday, January 24, 2013

NextPrinciples, Social is getting serious!

I was lucky enough to get a pre-briefing of the launch NextPrinciples announced yesterday and I loved what I saw; here is why: it was solid indication that Social is getting serious, the realization of the of the value that the true convergence of Social and CRM is beginning to dawn on Brands/Companies and that we have the right technology the tools available to us to do the job!

There is no shortage of vendors in the Social space, many of them amazing companies delivering tones of value (Jive, Lithium, Bazaarvoice, Nimble, to name a few), however there are few that have really honed in that aspect that I believe is primordial: who are my most important customers from a Social perspective? And I don't mean that solely within the context of a Campaign, but I mean it in an ongoing relationship with the company on a timeline that spans Campaigns and the gaps in between (clearly campaign's do feed data into answering this question).

I have told this story many times, not sure if I ever wrote it: the first time I came across the name of Social Media it carried a different name, it was called "Online Communities" (and it was Usenet based), it was amazingly important to my ability to perform my job; thanks to some amazing work Microsoft Research had been doing around these Online Communities it was relatively easy for me to find who were the participants that were most important (and I could slice it by answer people, connectors, discussion people, etc.), this was gold in my hands: I could focus in a few to validate my product ideas, I could focus on a few to help me distribute the message of its availability and value, I could focus on a few to identify contentious issues and address them in advance.. ever since I have worked on understanding the nature of Social Media in convergence with CRM and doing my best to help companies realize and use this value (which by the way is also very beneficial for the individuals).

Back to NextPrinciples: the extensive experience the team has in the Social but particularly the CRM space shows strongly; as you may expect their application does allow to set up and manage Campaigns; but that is not the end of it; Campaigns are carefully monitored and out of those key individuals are identified and captured in the system, their social identities and information gathered and synchronized with their CRM records. Integration with the likes of Salesforce, SugarCRM and Microsoft Dynamics ensure that the memory is kept and data is available to support future efforts, integration with the likes of Marketo and Hubspot ensures it feeds into the programmatic actions you have defined, integration with the likes of Lithium, Jive and GetSatisfaction as well as the Facebook's and Twitters of the world ensures your information is comprehensive and encompasses both owned and earned Social Media actions. These tight integrations allow NextPrinciples customers to address very important principles (if I may repeat that) and questions: "Can I offer a comprehensive experience to a customer regardless of where their action is happening?", "Who are the customers that matter the most?", "What is working?" and "What is coming out of all of this investment?"

I will be watching NextPrinciples very closely and expect many others to follow their path!